By now, it's accepted that a blogstorm can impact an election. It will be interesting to see if podcasting can also have an impact.

For my PR brethren and sistren outside of Texas, the '06 race for governor is currently a four-horse race between the incumbent, Rick Perry (R) and challenger Carole Keeton Strayhorn for the Republican nomination, with Chris Bell the Democratic front runner and Kinky Friedman as the dark horse independent.

While I was pinging the Kinky campaign to do the Armadillo Podcast interview, I came across a cool tool on BlogPulse that tracks interest in the blogosphere. See "Kinky Kampaign Krises."

In jest I blogged,

"On the 21st of September I asked Kinky Friedman's PR manager if the candidate would consent to be a guest on The Armadillo Podcast. On the BlogPulse
chart, notice that this date is the highest point of the Kinky
campaign. Since then, I've received no answer and Kinky's standings in
the blogosphere have fallen precipitously. (Even with a Dallas Morning News story yesterday.)

September 21st was actually the day Kinky released his Kinkytoon,
and apparently the blogs liked it. Since then, the attention has
fallen off. If this nontraditional ad was designed to spread virally
and attract the nontraditional voters, it seems to be puttering out.
There's also a pun in there about Kinky and viruses but I'm trying to
keep to the high road.

These stats come from BlogPulse and it's a great resource for
tracking a blog topic. For even more granular research, check out PubSub's analysis of Kinky's site--basically they're tanking since Sept. 21.

Today, for fun, I went back to BlogPulse and put all three (only three allowed) of the four candidates through their blog trend analyzer and this is what turned up:

With your help, I'd like to school the Committee to Elect the Kinkster on the inherent power of blogs and podcasts.

Kinky has a rather quixotic quest ahead of
him. He will need 50,000 registered voters to sign a
petition before he can be allowed on the ballot as an independent.
Texas law requires that he obtain 50,000 signatures but ONLY between
March
8 and May 11 and ONLY from people who do not cast a ballot in any party
primary
or runoff.

I'd like to do my part and interview Kinky on my podast. If nothing else, I want Kinky on the ballot
just to give us another choice. Why? To paraphrase Kinky, each
election year Texans are only given two choices: between paper and
plastic and we deserve better.

I read in a great New Yorker article about the candidate
that he's recently hired an adman who helped Jesse Ventura to his
unlikely win 1998. Like Ventura's campaign before it, the Committee to
Elect the Kinkster is looking into strategies that will attract,
"unlikely voters," according to the New Yorker.

Folks, in your quest to enlist the unlikely, I really hope ya'll will
embrace both the bloggers and the podcasters.

September 23, 2005

Considering Jeff Nightbyrd's history back in the sixties and seventies, you won't believe what he's doing now.

Nightbyrd had quite a large file compiled on him by the FBI back in the sixties when he served as the national vice president of the Students for a Democratic Society. He was also one of the founders of The Rag, the first underground newspaper in the South.

In the sixties, Jeff founded the New York Rat, a radical weekly that published the first interview with William Burroughs.

During the Chicago 1968 Democratic Convention, Burroughs, the Beatnik author of Naked Lunch, tried to teach Jeff Nightbyrd an unusual protest tactic while they were both running from the police.

While the "Battle of Michigan Avenue" raged all around Burroughs and Nightbyrd, many innocent bystanders, reporters and doctors offering medical help were severely beaten by the police. All told during these riots, the Chicago police reported 589 arrests, with 119 police and 100 protesters injured.

September 13, 2005

In addition to the launch of The Armadillo Podcast, I've also created a new, "private-label" blog that is only available to clients and potential clients. (Transparency is a good thing, I know, I know. But it's also wise not to "give away the whole farm," as we Texans have been known to say.)

Do you have a CEO with a story to tell? Then you'll want to know about our Executive Positioning program that takes the thought leadership that built your company to a mass audience, far beyond mere marketing-speak.

Or perhaps you'd like to learn how our Persistent Competitive Intelligence service uses RSS feeds to keep you and your staff informed and up-to-date on all the players in your space?

Many more programs and strategies are available on the blog, but it is intended for private viewing only.

This new blog is password-protected, so if you'd like to take it for a test drive, send me an email for the keys.

September 12, 2005

I'm sure you've heard, or at least I hope you've heard, the lyrics "I want go home with the armadillo," to quote the song by Gary P. Nunn, "to the friendliest people and prettiest women you've ever seen." The rest of the world knows this song as simply the "Home with the Armadillo" anthem, of PBS's Austin City Limits.

Most of Austin, at least I hope most of Austin, knows this song by its real title, "London Homesick Blues."

Like many a sad country tune, this song is set to a chipper beat. When you hear the first few strains that they play on Austin City Limits, it's easy to think this is an upbeat song. But this is truly a sad, sad song.

The forlorn and homesick Texan protagonist of the song complains that it's "cold over here and I wish they'd turn the heat on." The local Londoners complain that he's "from down South and when you open your mouth, you always seem to put you foot there."

In the spirit of this song I'm going to be putting my foot firmly in mouth with a weekly podcast of ostentatious interviews of Austinites famous and infamous, known and unknown. My sole intent is to convince my good friend Galia, an Israeli woman living way out in California, to move and live with us here in the land of the weird and the home of the armadillo. Or, to put it another way, I hope to make her homesick for a place she has only visited once.

If you have a friend you'd like to move here as well, or if you would like to send Galia an email with your own favorite story about Austin, send us an email and perhaps we'll interview you on our next podcast.